


The Tale of Black Joan and The Raven King

by Dark_Horse_Writer



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Baby John Childermass, Betaed, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Footnotes, Mild Smut, Pre-Canon, Sensuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 12:33:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4787420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dark_Horse_Writer/pseuds/Dark_Horse_Writer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a young woman of York whose fingernails were dirty, whose hair was tousled in an unstylish array, and whose clothes were tattered. If one was to learn that a fine young man wished to meet this woman at an abandoned abbey on the night of a full moon, one might suspect that she was a lady or some other noble in disguise. But this was not true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tale of Black Joan and The Raven King

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Susanna Clarke is the owner of _Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell_ , and I am only writing this story purely for fun.
> 
> Even though I have written other fanfiction stories on FF.net, this is my first foray into the wonderful JSAMN community. There are so many talented writers, and I feel overwhelmed to be in such great company. 
> 
> Please bear with me on the footnotes. I tried to link them back to the text, but I never quite got it right and kept getting error messages. I know you'll mumble about scrolling, but I followed the tutorial to the latter and I still had problems. So, please do not let that count against me.
> 
> I want to thank the wonderful Onstraysod for the betaing she did. It was excellent and most helpful. 
> 
> Also, I want to thank Fourteenpavanes for the head canon regarding Black Joan as a pirate.
> 
> I apologize for the awful title, and please let me know if I can improve anything. Thank you for reading.

_Beverly, East Riding 1771_

There was a young woman of York whose fingernails were dirty, whose hair was tousled in an unstylish array, and whose clothes were tattered. If one was to learn that a fine young man wished to meet this woman at an abandoned abbey on the night of a full moon, one might suspect that she was a lady or some other noble in disguise. But this was not true. If said young woman was of Romani ancestry, than her respectability was even less than a common English prostitute.[1] This man then, one would assume, would want her services, pay her, and be on his merry way.

When gentlemen and their ladies saw her stalking about they covered their noses with their handkerchiefs or pitied her and gave her a guinea. Though she knew some of her people had lighter skin, she was not one of them. The young woman in question did have a name, Joan. Black Joan. Black for her fingernails that never seemed to be clean, her brown eyes always judging, and her hair a dark brown that rarely got washed.

  
She was an orphan, a bastard child, a thief, a former pirate, a former maid, a beggar, and a leader of a gang of child thieves. One would question if she wanted a life as more than that of a penniless street woman, but she did not mind for she had three things that kept her life filled with meaning.

  
Independence, God, and The Raven King.

  
She would sit in the back of the church, and would pray on her knees at the pew. Pray for three meals that day for her and the children. Pray for her little children to not be caught (but she taught them so well they should not be). Pray for the return of her King.

  
Like any good Northerner, the stories of their King who disappeared some three centuries ago kept her spirits intact. The men of Westminster did not know what she held dear to her, only her King did.[2] She knew he would return, deep in her bones it thrummed: the continual belief that He would come back for all of them. She spoke of this to no one, for they shook their heads at her sorry thoughts. The children around her looked up to her, but not a single child she felt would understand her plight.[3]

  
When the full moon came, she walked to the abandoned abbey outside of the town. The leaves of a tree were blown off the branches by the fall winds, winter would be upon them soon. They said that those places abandoned were given to her King, and that was why she took great care to not break a single bramble or toss a stone out of place. She walked into the hollow halls and heard a raven caw. She shivered and brought her shawl closer to her, dilapidated and frayed as it was.

  
“I did not think you would come.”

  
Joan turned around and saw him. The young man whose face was pale, whose black hair shone in the moonlight, and whose eyes sparkled with humor. His voice the timbre of the North, dark and husky but with evidence of education—at least of other tongues, be it French.

  
“I’m not at the leisure to miss an appointment,” she paused, “sir.”

  
He chuckled. “Aye, this is not an appointment.”

  
Joan blinked. “Then why have you called me here?”

  
He walked up to her. His black breeches were pressed, his cream satin waistcoat as well, a white cravat tied around his neck perfectly to match his gleaming teeth. He wore a traveler’s cloak made of fine velvets she was sure cost at least a hundred guineas. When he stopped in front of her, Joan felt in her bones that this young man, beyond not making her acquaintance at an earlier hour, would not harm her, but why she could not explain. His eyes pierced her own, and she turned away. A finger, and another, touched her cheek and she brought her eyes to his.

  
“To spend one night with you, Black Joan.”

  
She knitted her eyebrows. “Sir, you mentioned this was not an appointment. I do not see any—”

  
“It is not, as I said, an appointment.” He smiled at her, leisurely. “I merely wanted to spend my free night with a young woman who has not forgotten.”

  
“Forgotten? How would I forget a supposed appointment?”

  
His lips turned upwards into a smirk, but he did not add anything further. As he stood there in front of her his eyes traveled to her hair (in disarray and not respectful), cheeks (blushed by the chill of the night), nose (which she knew was broken), and her tattered skirts (even though she had sewn them time and time again).

  
“That was not what I meant.” He took her fingers into his own.

  
Black Joan’s skin crawled, not in disgust as one in her position might feel, but in a staccato of light and dark, warmth and ice, and other opposites as he rubbed her fingers. His pupils were lit with stars, Joan thought, but the sensation of his smooth fingers over her calloused hands made her stop in her tracks. Somehow she knew this gentleman far better than she should from just a glance and a whisper. Her bones yearned for his touch to continue, and as she let him take off her shawl her shoulders were bared. Dirt, grime, and dust collected on her skin, but the gentleman paid it no mind.

  
“Surely a gentleman like yourself seeks better company than mine?”

  
The gentleman’s lips twitched. “Why should I, if I’ve already found the jewel of Yorkshire standing in front of me?”

  
Joan’s cheeks flushed: such praises were for the ladies in court and of society. Hardly words she heard muttered on the street, and, if so, they were not meant as pleasantries. The gentleman leaned toward her lips, and Joan found his lips chapped. This did not dissuade her from returning his token, and she felt his hands leave hers to circle her neck. Her hands were free to move to his own. 

  
Joan was no virtuous maid, and she knew when a man wanted more (and she herself would often push and begin so many of these rounds). The gentleman, she knew, could be much more aggressive in his stance, but rather he laid his lips to hers as softly as a raven landed on freshly fallen snow. When he ended it, Joan’s breath hitched as he broke apart from her. His eyes glistened with want and hers mirrored him. This might have been no appointment, but the man did want her and she wanted him.

  
“Come.” He held his hand out to her and Joan grabbed it. Before she did she touched his cheek.

  
“Tell me sir, what are you called?” He smiled at her.

  
“You may call me John.”

  
Joan followed John as he took her further into the abandoned abbey, but the building blurred and vines crept around them. Her stomach swayed, but she could not recall why. They came to a room lit with candles; soft pelts and furs lay upon the floor. It was not a respectable place for the evening’s affair, but Black Joan was not respectable in the least. John, her bones surmised, was not as respectable as he seemed either.

  
He twirled his finger around a loose hair and stared into her eyes, and Joan shuffled towards him. As she leaned into him and her lips touched his, she felt his hands twitch and encircle her hips. Her own hands made their way up to his neck, where she untied his cravat. She felt his chest heave with a chuckle and felt his lips leave her mouth. He held her tighter and his hands traveled down to her thighs. His mouth kissed her collarbone and Joan struggled to untie his cravat, but when she did she heard his voice by her ear.

  
“I was going to ask if you’d make love to me, but I suppose—” He stopped as Joan pushed herself forward; John took a step back in response to the ferocity with which she kissed and sucked at his neck. A faint hiss could be heard from the injured party as his eyes fluttered when he felt her hand brush against his prick. Her voice whipped against his ear.

  
“You’d suppose, sir that a lady such as myself cannot know what she wants?” She bit his earlobe and he groaned, his eyes alight with mischief. Her voice deepened. “I want you, sir, and you may have your way with me.”

  
What followed could be described as a dance of two souls, the Earth mother and the Darkness. The beating of their hearts in unison as they came together in acts of carnal pleasure and delight was deafening. Howls and cries of ecstasy thundered in the space, but their bodies melded together like a thief’s fingers in a gentleman’s coat pocket. Joan never felt as wanted as she did with John, who basked in her independence to do as she pleased to him.

  
When it came to him quelling her, he knew intimately what made her weak in the knees. His fingers ran along her spine or down her thighs before they entered her and found that spot that made her cry out in pleasure. His body was devoid of his clothes, his eyes were frantic with need, and before her was no gentleman but a young man of wild origins and inconstant domestication. Her body heaved with his ministrations, just as his body became an instrument for her and she plucked at all the right places.

  
There was a moment in their dance that John sucked on Joan’s breast and she weaved her hands into his silky locks. His eyes met hers and he lifted his head from his previous ministrations.

  
“I want you to bear me a son.”[4]

  
Joan stilled as he crept up her bosom and his eyes were right in front of her.

  
"He would not be respectable.”

  
He shook his head and grinned. “Let’s not worry about that right now. I think he will, in time.”

  
“I do not think I’d make a good mother.”

  
John placed a finger on her lips. “I think you’d be an excellent mother, but I cannot force you.”

  
With the weight of John on her hips, their bodies washed with sweat, and her eyes fogged by lust or by some enchantment, she felt unsure. But her bones rattled at the thought that she would bear John a son, the son she longed for, and she knew this was the time for her to do it.

  
“I cannot give him the life he deserves.” John played with her hair and breathed into her ear.

  
“You will give him what he needs.”

  
Joan smiled at him as he leaned down to kiss her. Their dance was less of a carnal union, more a coming together of two lovers whose bodies want the other. John’s fingers traveled down her body and pinpricks of shock traveled up and down like a stampede of horses. Joan groaned as he prepared her; she felt his knees by her thighs and his hands played with her woman parts and his breath lapped at her hips. Each flick of the finger or stretch made her body heave and left her wetter than a hot summer’s day in York. By the time his prick entered her, her body felt the storm around them.

  
As he created a steady rhythm between the two of them she could not help, through the haze of lust and ecstasy, the words that fell from her mouth. Words from a game she remembered.

  
“ _I greet thee, Lord, and bid thee welcome to my heart_.”

  
She did not know why she had said it, but John’s face appeared before her after the words left her lips. His eyes were dark and glittered with need, but warmth, compassion, and, dare she say it, love were all interwoven as his lips touched hers once again.

  
His arms wrapped around her and she sighed as he removed his prick from her. His hands threaded through her hair, no longer matted but shining in the candlelight. Her skin, too, shone pale, the dirt no longer on her. He spooned his body behind her and wrapped a protective hand around her hip. Joan leaned against him, her eyes closed in post-ecstasy. His left hand ran itself down her shoulders and she sighed. Words left his lips, but she could not tell the language as he whispered them before he kissed her shoulders.

  
“What ar’ you sayin?” Joan turned around to see John smile at her.

  
“It’s a blessing, or so I’ve heard.” His eyes sparkled.

Joan knitted her eyebrows, for she knew blessings in the tongue of her people, in English, and in Latin. [5]The language he spoke did not align with those that she knew, or even languages from the continent.

  
“I think you’re lyin’ to me, sir.”

  
He moved away from her, his eyes dark and thoughtful. He set his head upon his knuckles, leaned upon his elbows, and watched as she sat up, clinging a hand to one of the furs to cover her bosom.

  
“Why make such an accusation?”

  
Joan shifted in her seat. “I know I don’t look it, sir, but I do know more than ya think.”

  
His eyes stared into hers, deep and fathomless. If Joan understood mystical signs, which she did not (even though many people believed that all of her kind could foretell the future), she would have known this day was foretold. The day John Uskglass would return to England and an heir to his Kingdom would be born. Instead, John got off of his elbows and placed his hands on Joan’s shoulders.

  
“Aye.”

  
His smile eased her spirit, and they spent the night together wrapped in furs and pelts. He stroked her hair and entertained the thought of a son and what she would name him. The name fell off her lips, for it made sense to her and to him. The rest of the night dissolved into a fantasy, and Joan woke up in her usual spot in an alley cleared away for her children. She did not recall what had happened, or why parts of her body felt sore. She saw one of the older boys and asked him what she had done; none judged her for her habits and he said she had been there asleep. She had been dreaming with a smile on her face and her body glowed.

  
Joan would come to reflect on that particular day, thinking that it was likely she had been drugged though she knew enough to avoid it. A few weeks later, her body felt different and the woman’s bleed did not come. The next time it did not either, and Joan knew she was with child. She knew she could not keep him, but every thought of ending it left her mind.

  
She did not remember that she met John a few more times, who came to make sure she would have the baby and would have help to care for him. Those times there would be a caress, a kiss, and sweet whisperings in her ear. She would wake up not remembering them at all, but knowing she needed the child. She had wanted one after all, but the fact that the d—m bastard who did this to her did not stick around to help angered her. Not that she was surprised her station and her gender meant that her voice and opinion did not matter in such things.

* * *

  _Beverly, East Riding, 1772_

  
Joan held her son after he was christened and wrapped; she was made to be on her way the day after. She sat by the window in the room at the church where she gave birth, and there was a full moon. Joan stroked a finger over his forehead and blessed him as her people did, but she added another blessing: that of her King. For him to return and for her son to be held in his arms. That night she dreamed of John with her and her son. He smiled at her son, and kissed him on his forehead.

  
When John woke up in the middle of the night screaming for his mother, Joan woke up with a start and heard a raven caw by the window. Joan picked up John and fed him, but the black feather by the window still told her that the King had answered her prayer. She smiled as her son suckled at her breast. He would not be respectable in the eyes of society, but in the eyes of her King he was, she knew, royalty.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> 1 Although, anti-Romani prejudices were starting to be repealed in the 1780’s in the U.K, other parts of Europe still held the Romani people in contempt. This is not to say they were liked in the U.K despite the repeals.
> 
> 2 The English Parliament, which met at Westminster did not believe in the Raven King. His tales were folklore to those of the North, and there were other issues to attend to at the time. Considering, that the divide between the North England, including Yorkshire, and Southern England were at odds it would seem that those at Westminster should be careful in what they say.
> 
> 3 By plight, not her life in poverty, but her belief that the Raven King, John Uskglass, would return. The children she led lived their lives as thieves and not as converts to her old ways. Though, they enjoyed her stories of him well enough. 
> 
> 4 Many would question the wisdom of a woman getting asked that question when one was engaged in the act of consummation. It is well known that women would never be pleased by such a query, but Black Joan was not an ordinary women. She had wanted a son for a long time, but wanted to have it with a man she believed respectable. For a woman in her position, such an offer did not come and she knew it would have to come another way. 
> 
> 5 Despite what others believe, Joan learned her letters before she ran away to become a pirate.


End file.
